In preparation for the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in February 2018, The National Archives (TNA) in Kew, England is asking the public to share stories of their suffrage ancestors:
• Did your ancestor have a distant suffrage connection?
• Did they get arrested for the cause?
• Maybe there’s a family rumour they were involved in the dramatic Black Friday protests?
• Did they attend mass open-air meetings?
• Did one of your female forebears have copies of The Suffragette?
On February 6, 1918, the Representation of the People Act received royal assent, enfranchising approximately 5.6 million more men and 8.4 million women in Britain.
Women’s Social and Political Union founders Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, 1908. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
In its blog post, Do you have a suffrage ancestor?, TNA says it wants to hear “all sorts of stories” of people involved in the movement.
“(S)o often it is largely the figureheads who are remembered. In our government files we often find names of less well-known suffrage supporters – indeed the index we hold (available on Ancestry) has the names of 1,333 suffragettes arrested for the cause, including over 100 men. This Home Office suffrage amnesty is one of the single best sources in our collection, providing a rich source for tracing suffragettes, militant campaigners, and family history.
“The societies we talk generally talk about in relation to suffrage history are often the same ones, but maybe you have a relative who was part of the Actresses Franchise League or the Tax Resistance League. Or perhaps they boycotted the 1911 census?”
If you are interested in trying to trace a family member involved in the suffrage movement you can use TNA’s Women’s Suffrage research guide or the London School of Economics blog post, Was your (great) grandmother a suffragette?
